


Carry your bones

by daredevil_09



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel Angst (Supernatural), Castiel Loves Dean Winchester, Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, Dead Castiel (Supernatural), Dead Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Loves Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester Takes Care of Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester Fight, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Injured Dean Winchester, Injured Sam Winchester, POV Sam Winchester, Pining Sam Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester Angst, Sam Winchester Loves Dean Winchester, Young Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:47:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27992505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daredevil_09/pseuds/daredevil_09
Summary: There are about a million other things that should be flitting through Sam’s head but all he can think of is how hard he’ll have to scrub to get the blood off his brother’s back.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48





	Carry your bones

**Author's Note:**

> The following 8k words or so are my humble, humble tribute, not only to the badass, insane and beautiful show that is Supernatural, but to Sam and Dean Winchester in particular. There has never quite been anyone like the two of you, nor will there ever be. 
> 
> Series finale left me reeling, I will not lie, but hey, we work with what we got right? 
> 
> Hopefully some of you out there needed this story, which is just a compilation of lots of insight, and everything we didn't get to see. Happy reading!

_When you were young you used to dream about fires_   
_And scream into the night_   
_To find me standing barefoot at your side_   
_I used to whisper it will be alright_   
_And lay down at your side_   
_And take your tiny hands into mine_

_And how_   
_Was I to know_   
_I'm not strong_   
_I should have saved you_

_—Forest fire (Brighton)_

There are about a million other things that should be flitting through Sam’s head but all he can think of is how hard he’ll have to scrub to get the blood off his brother’s back.

\--

The first face you see is either your mother’s or your father’s.

Even Sam knows this, because Dean let slip in the clusterfuck of a hunt that had been Nevada (werepires; and Dean would get a kick out of Sam using his word), that Mom held him close to her chest for hours after he’d been born. Wouldn’t let him go.

In Dean’s defense, the two of them had been wasted beyond measure, two bottles of whiskey and the weight of two lives they’d been too slow to save.

So Sam knows—the first face he’s ever seen is Mary Winchester’s but damn it all to hell, the one he remembers is Dean’s.

\--

The funny thing is, this isn’t even the first time he’s had to do this; how’s that for jacked up? Sam’s done this before, after the hellhounds, after the Mark.

He knows exactly what Dean’s body feels like when it’s no longer alive, the doll-like weight, the stiffness. He even knows its smell, of rot, of the sleek-steel scent of the Impala, but also that ultra-masculine deodorant Dean insists on wearing all the time (overcompensating, he remarks in his own head. The expected reply: _shut it, bitch_ , does not come).

Sam opens the trunk and gets out a shovel.

\--

Stanford was an illusion.

That Sammy, the one with the bangs and the fuck-you Dad attitude? He knew that too.

Call it pathetic, but Sam knows he’d gotten gone just so that mirage became real, if only for a second. Even with Jess, he was practically expecting, no, waiting, for the ground to be yanked from beneath his feet. It’s actually kinda hysterical, that it was the ceiling instead. (Sam cannot believe he just thought that. He goes back to the dirt, the burn in his arms, his stomach. When in doubt, Sammy, he hears Dean tell him, stick with what you know.)

You know what Dad, Sam had said. I’m done. I’m done. With you. With hunting. With this life. And he’d pulled out his letter, proof that he could be accepted, accepted somewhere other than their messed-up family that woke up in different variations of the same motel room every morning, the one that caged him in a house made of wheels and black leather seats, and schools he was pulled out of as a punishment for fitting in.

He’d waved the measly paper, brandished it in Dad’s face and pushed out the door of a particularly dingy bungalow Bobby had loaned them for that summer before he could meet Dean’s eyes.

But the door swung open anyway. “You mean it, Sammy?” His brother’s voice had been impossibly scratchy. “’Bout being done?”

Sam had been angry, but the anger contorted the second Dean had followed him out of the house, warped and twisted itself into something he couldn’t quite handle. Yes, Stanford was going to be his ticket out, his ticket away. And until this very second, Sam had somehow managed to repress that it meant his ticket away from Dean.

“Yes,” Sam whispered. He looked down, because he couldn’t bear to see what Dean’s face looked like just then. When he looked up again, Dean was gone.

That night, his bed had never felt colder.

There was a showdown, of course there was, between the daddy Winchester and his youngest, right before Sam was headed to the bus station, a slip of paper with PALO ALTO printed on it, and Dean walked in just in time to witness the climax: “You walk out that door, boy, don’t you ever come back.” (Sam can still hear the creak of the broken porch step as he walks out anyway. He hears it in his dreams, and again, when Dean repeats the same words, same tone, in a nameless honeymoon suite. He’d walked out then too.)

Sam’s storming furiously to the bus-stand, never mind it being a half-hour away on foot, when the Impala pulls up. “Where the fuck were you?” he spit-shouts at Dean.

Dean flinches, it creates a spark of guilt in the pit of Sam’s stomach.

“Doesn’t matter.” Dean says. “I’m here now.” His voice kind of trembles on the word ‘here’ but Dean masters himself enough to say, “Need a ride?”

Sam climbs in shotgun. His brother smells like beer. But. Dean’s hands are steady on the wheel.

The bus stop is wet. It smells like a goodbye.

Dean hands him his duffel. There’s the rumble of the approaching vehicle. Would you believe it, that’s the first time Sam looks Dean in the eyes since he’s announced that he’s running away. (Even then, Sam’s always thought of it as running). He thinks his brother might be crying.

“C’mere,” Dean says. I can just not go, Sam thinks wildly, head tucked between Dean’s hair and neck. We can just forget this happened; he thinks, when his own arms lock behind Dean’s shoulders.

Dean pulls back first. That’s not fair, you bastard, Sam shoots at him silently, and the corners of Dean’s eyes crinkle a little, like he knows. “Careful, Sammy, yeah?” he says, serious.

Sam nods. “Be safe, Dean,” he says.

He’s just two hours away from Palo Alto when he finds the cash. Eight hundred dollars, all neatly rolled up, freshly won, because Sam knows for a fact that they didn’t have that much money, hence Bobby’s cabin. It’s the most Dean’s ever gambled in one night. By far.

And, there’s a packet of Lucky Charms at the bottom.

\--

Sam breaks the first shovel before the ground has dented two feet. Because he’s been digging when he should have been chopping and fuck, he doesn’t know. No more resurrections, Dean said. Well, Sam thinks, viscous. Fuck you too, Dean.

He goes back to the Impala. There’s a box of Lucky Charms next to the axe.

Sam closes the trunk a little harder than he needs to.

\--

Sometimes, they look at the stars. The stars are the same, whether they’re in Kansas or Colorado or Nova freakin’ Scotia. In the first year back on the job, Sam wonders if Jess is somewhere up there, amidst all the specks of light. He wonders what she’d say. _What happened to you, Sam?_ most probably. Followed by a _You’re better than this_. He wonders if Dean thinks of Cassie, or Lisa, or the hundred other girls his brother’s hooked up with over the years.

But Dean’s face is smooth. He’s reclined on the hood, head in one hand, beer in the other. Lynyrd Skynyrd is playing in the background. There’s a cricket next to the left wiper and Sam’s been lazily threatening to put it in Dean’s hair for the past hour. Both of them jump when Hell’s Bells starts up. Sam gets beer down his front and Dean laughs and calls him a clumsy fucker, and Sam just pours the rest into Dean’s hair, and throws the cricket at him for good measure.

It’s the last time either of them laughs for a long time, because immediately after, Lilith and Lucifer and Michael and the fucking apocalypse happen. Sam loses his soul.

After it’s been shoved back into him, Sam thinks he loses his brother, too.

\--

Sam’s chopped down one very small tree. He’s saving the big one for last. He thinks, Cas should be here for this. Cas, maybe, might be the only other person who knew what it was like to love Dean Winchester, really love him. Sam should get Jody here, and Jack. Bobby. It’s hard to remember, sometimes, that Dean wasn’t just Sam’s.

He takes out his phone.

The first contact he sees is in his favorites column.

(Dean bounds into the room, waving around Sam’s phone, fresh from a shower. Sam looks up from his laptop, hoping sincerely that Dean hadn’t been using it to watch porn in the bathroom (it would not be the first time). His brother is grinning so wide it looks like his face will split open. “What are you doing with my phone, useless?”

“Can do whatever the fuck I want,” Dean says, and as if he’s proving it, he snatches Sam’s laptop away from him. Sam narrows his eyes at him. “Give it back,” he says. He’d die for Dean, honestly, but there are lines.

“Can’t deny your favorite, Sammy,” Dean says slyly. He looks entirely too pleased with himself. Sam sees why a moment later. He feels his face heating up. “Shut up,” he mutters and Dean laughs, that asshole, and Sam hurries to salvage his dignity. “It’s so I don’t have to scroll down an endless list of contacts to find yours.” Dean is still grinning like the Cheshire cat. It’s infuriating.

Sam snatches his phone back. Removes Dean’s name from the favorites list with a sharp slide of his finger. “There,” he snaps. “If I’m dying of blood-loss and can’t find your fucking name on my phone, we’ll know who to blame.”

Dean sobers. The next day, his name is back in the directory with a small star, minus the mocking. Sam lets it stay.)

The phone—Sam doesn’t exactly plan this part—ends up in the stream.

\--

Demon-blood. Dean. Demon-blood. Dean.

After Azazel, Sam knew he couldn’t have both. He’d chosen the high. And Dean, of course, had chosen him. Back then, he’d wished for balance, wished that Dean would just let him be, save lives with his powers, and still be his brother. It couldn’t be that hard, could it?

Now, that wish is biting him in the ass, because demons and his brother are being combined in one of the most terrible amalgamations in Winchester history. Sam high on demon blood was bad enough, but Sam thinks watching his brother turning into one of those black-eyed freaks will _kill_ him.

It’s every nightmare, every bad stray thought, every death they’ve lived through, all at once, with no warning. Just a goddamn note which makes Sam want to alternatively beat the shit out of something, lock himself up in his room and never come out, and beat the shit out of _Dean_.

_Sammy, let me go._

Sam didn’t tell Dean, even after he got him back, that he’d torn that notes to shreds and then proceed to keep the scraps. After he’d come back with a body bag to find the bed empty, and seen that Dean was somehow, miraculously, terribly alive. Selfish of him (and doesn’t Sam know it) to be more hurt that Dean left him than glad that Dean wasn’t dead.  
The tears were just that hurt spilling over. Because Sam knows, that if their positions were reversed, there wasn’t enough money, booze or promises that could make Sam walk away. Make Sam write that note, asking Dean to let him go. Make Sam leave.

He hates Dean for being able to leave. Hates him blackly, darkly, resentfully.

\--

Sam’s in the gray zone. He’s been chopping so long, his arms are pleasantly numbed, lost in the rhythm. He almost has enough wood. Dean’s lighter is suddenly very heavy in his pocket.

\--

Near Lebanon, there’s a church. In the church, there’s a confessional. And in Sam, there are so many things to confess. The first thing that flashes into his head isn’t Purgatory, or the stint with the demon blood, though that’s what he tells Dean later, when Dean makes him talk. All of that is there, terrible and godawful, but Sammy remembers this first:

They’re in Bixby, Oklahoma. Sam wasn’t let out hunting then, left behind in motels to handle research and recon. A pack of colpachs gone rogue, dragging and drowning people in the nearest water bodies. Dad was already on it.

Which was why the call was so unexpected. Asking a particular Agent Slade for aid at Haikey Creek. Sam was at that prickly age, growing slowly but steadily out of his hero-worship, snappish and easily ticked off.

He didn’t put up much of a fight when Dean said he was heading out to see if they could grab any extra intel. There was a book Sam had seen, a guide to the Ivy League Colleges, New Edition jammed between the nightstand and the wall. It would be easier to flip through it if he was alone.

There’s something a little bit off about this case, has to do with how far the victims were dragged, how far away from the water they were when taken. Colpachs were river spirits, they drew strength from their waterside dwellings. And there were tracks too, almost like tires, around where the vics had been grabbed, layers of dust on the grass.

He’d chalked it up to desperation, a greater need to feed. Didn’t matter. Dad would get them, he always did. Sam grazed his finger over the UCLA campus, hovering over the tiny script. And the phone had rung. Dean. Sam hadn’t picked up. (Listen to me, Sam. If Dean or I call you, you pick up. Could be a matter of life and death, son, there’s no way to know. So whatever you’re doing, you get off your butt to answer. Understand? _Yessir_.)

But it rang. Again. And again. “What do you want Dean?” Sam snaps.

“Sammy.”

Sam stiffens. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Dean?”

Dean coughs, like he’s hacking out a lung. “‘M fine.” he says. “Dust devils out here, Sammy. Took me off guard. Call dad. They’re headed his way. Looks like they’re working with colpachs, bringing the vics to them.” He proceeds to hack out his other lung.

“Where are you?” Sam asks urgently. His Ivy League manual is abandoned on the floor. The fact that Dean cough-sniff-snorts his location means that he’s hurt, hurt bad.

It’s not the first time Sam has seen Dean hurt, but it’s the first time Dean is hurt because of _him_.

It sticks, over the long years on the road. Keep your head in the game, Sam, he goads himself. No distractions. No slip-ups.  
It’s the first thing he apologizes for in the church. Sorry that I’m always thinking about myself more, Dean, sorry that it’s in me to get away. Sorry that I almost got you killed then, sorry that I just don’t quite fit.

He cries a little, because Dean thinks Sam didn’t try to bust him out of Purgatory because Sam doesn’t love him enough, but Sam knows the truth: it’s because Sam can’t handle bringing his brother back, again, only to watch him die, _again_.

\--

The pyre has been built. There’s a little trouble with the platform, the weave to tie it all together, he usually has Dean supporting the beams as Sam makes sure the logs don’t just collapse beneath, but Dean isn’t here right now, so Sam manages.

Sam needs to clean the body next.

Which means he’ll have to look at it.

\--

Dean has a fetish for mix tapes. When they’re on the coast, it’s Credence Clearwater Revival, set not too loud, but not soft either. Just enough to be heard over the open windows. The long stretch of desert roads and hot sun burning overhead brings on a shouting match with the universe with Zeppelin II (took Sam two years to learn how to sleep through that racket). When they pass through Kansas, Dean switches to the kind of music Dad used to like, all Dukes of Hazzard and old country and classic Zeppelin. He hums sometimes, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel, one hand on Baby’s flank, looking for all the world like he had been born for this exact moment.

Sometimes, he makes Sam sing, especially if Bon Jovi patches through the radio while they’re night driving to the next state. Sam shoots silent apologies to every car that passes them on the highway. Dean can sing well if he wants to, but Sam’s voice wasn’t built for something as delicate as singing.

He’s adapted. He’s been forced to. (You know what happens if you touch my tracks, right Sammy? _Disembowelment._ Exactly right.)

Sam’s working a case with Cas in Wichita. They drove there on a hot tip from Garth about witches causing people’s limbs to fall right off (the _irony_ ), but it turns out to be a couple of misplaced marrow transplants, a teenager on crack, and one very unfortunate incident involving a washing machine and pieces of transparent polycarbonate.  
They’re heading back to the bunker in Cas’s truck because Dean was in a particularly bitchy mood, refusing to lend Sam the Impala, when the music makes him jump in his seat.

Sam’s so used to tuning out Dean’s usual antics, but since when does Cas listen to the Immigrant’s Song, Zeppelin IV, Ramble on?

“Cas!” Sam says in shock.

“What’s wrong?” Cas asks, turning down the music. “Should I stop?” Sam shakes his head, cursing himself for overreacting. This is just Dean’s influence, Dean’ stupid whirlpool effect where he sucks everyone in, human and angel or otherwise. Sam ejects the tape. The label reads DEAN’S TOP 13 ZEPP TRAXX in his brother’s handwriting, almost unrecognizable because it’s that neat.

“Dean gave this to you?” Sam asks. There’s a small pit of hurt in his stomach, like betrayal, but he pushes it away. “Yes?” Cas says, uncertainly.

“He told me to listen to them before Charlie ‘infected’ me with something called…modern pop.” Cas grimaces. Sam resists the urge to laugh; hysterically.

“That’s…” Sam says, “That’s good, yeah, p’rolly a good idea.” He sticks the cassette back and pushes play, thinking.

He’s still thinking when the music changes to Stairway to Heaven.

\--

Sam’s stopped for a break. Everything hurts. He wishes there was a body to burn in Cas’s case. He thinks, maybe, he could have burned Cas and Dean together. Maybe.  
He pulls the sheet off Dean’s face. You don’t feel anything, Sammy, Sam tells himself. There’s two bottles of Mountain Dew and Dean’s flask filled with water. Sam’s grabbed one of his old t-shirts and he wipes a streak off Dean’s face, wets it, wipes it again.

This will take a while.

\--

Sam’s thought about how he wants to die. It doesn’t matter when, only that it isn’t by a monster (those bastards have taken enough), and that it isn’t in vain. His only two conditions, really.  
Because there are a thousand million ways he could die, should die, even, but this—this—isn’t one of them. That’s Dean, standing over him. That’s Dean, with the scythe over his head. Sam blinks,

Dean’s eyes turn black, and it scares Sam to death that he doesn’t know if he’s imagined it or if it’s the Mark.

There are pictures, laid in front of his knees. Dean will need them, if he manages to find his way back. Sam hopes, for Dean’s sake, that he never does. There’s one of Dean and Mary, Mom’s blond hair framing her beautiful face, and a little boy held close to her chest. Sam’s eyes burn. What the hell happened to us? he thinks, and the first tear slips loose.

Falls between the one of Dean and Mom and another of Dean and him, leaning against the Impala. Sam is laughing because Dean’s just said something funny, Sam knows that little upturned quirk of his brother’s mouth. Who took that picture? They were young enough that it could have been Dad, it could have been Bobby.  
Damn you, Dean. His nose is running. Sam wonders if it will make Dean kill him faster if he reaches out to wipe his face.

“Close your eyes, Sammy,” Dean says. And it. Sounds. Like. Him. It sounds like the Dean from before, the Dean with the unscarred forearm, the one with laughing eyes and bad morning breath and slippered feet because Dean is a creature of luxury. His brother.

And that, Sam thinks, is the final insult. He nods up at Dean, it’s enraged and forgiving and hating and loving all at once. Do it, Sam thinks. He wishes. He hopes.  
But Dean isn’t done. His eyes are a little wet. He says, “Forgive me,” and Sam hates him. And he loves him. And he bows his head.

He thinks, here you go, you motherfucker. This time, you’ll have to bury _me_ , how ‘bout that for a change?

The blow never comes.

\--

Dead bodies aren’t bodies. They’re objects. There’s a difference between holding a dead thing and a living thing, but you won’t appreciate it unless you hold the same thing both ways. Bodies, Sam knows, are stiff and difficult to move both before and after rigor mortis, but, this, it’s actually getting ridiculous. Sam begins to cut the shirt from Dean’s back—and he gets it—he can tear the damn thing out and Dean won’t actually feel a thing.

But he doesn’t.

He uses his knife to cut pieces of the cloth off, as gentle as if Dean were still alive. (Dammit Sam, you’re the girl here, aren’t you supposed to have better bedside manners?) Dean’s head is in his lap. When he uses Dean’s chest to steady the knife, there’s a small noise from Dean’s throat.

Sam freezes. He knows, goddammit, that bodies can still make sounds, can groan or creak or whistle. It’s just the last of the air being expelled from the lungs. There can be spasms too, twitches of the muscle, and that’s when Sam gently extricates Dean’s head from his lap and loses his lunch (his dinner from last night) in front of the Impala’s left front wheel.

He steadies himself on the warm metal, his cheek rests on the frame. He smells motor oil, and grease. Sam can’t do this alone, but he has to, and he remembers Miracle waiting for them in the bunker.  
The Impala wakes with a twist of the key (he had to pry it from Dean’s pocket), but the roar of the engine is more subdued than usual. It’s like Baby knows that he isn’t Dean. Sam thumps his head against the steering wheel, sucks in a breath.

“He’s not coming back,” Sam whispers to her, and Baby’s engine seems to dull further.

\--

It’s the middle of winter, and they’re marooned up in Seattle, a little too close to California for Sam’s comfort. Everything’s expensive, everything’s distant, not to mention it’s fucking cold, and the Impala’s heater just isn’t cutting it.

Dean is being a hands-down jerk, first insisting that Sam isn’t keeping far enough from him to ensure his personal space (Dean, you’re in the driver’s seat, how _the fuck_ am I too close to you?) and then complaining about the cold (No, Dean, I won’t lend you my freakishly long heater legs. _Personal space_ , remember?) and when he started on the non-edibility of Seattle’s burgers, Sam’s just about had it.

“Dean,” he hisses, venomously enough that it gets Dean to drop his unidirectional, headache-inducing monologue for a second. “We need somewhere warm, we need a case, and godsabove, if you take me to another diner that serves _grease_ again, I will gut you.” As an afterthought, Sam adds, “And steal your car.”

The last threat has shocked Dean, injured him. Sam can read it in the wide set of his eyes, the small gape in his mouth. Sam pats Baby where Dean can't see, in silent apology. The moment breaks, splinters. Dean swats him in the head, hard enough to sting.

“Stop the car,” Sam growls. “Sammy,” Dean starts, but Sam is really, truly, done. He could blame it on the cold, he could blame it on his brother, he could blame the goddamn universe. “No,” Dean says, and presses his foot on the accelerator to prove his stupid, domineering, alpha assholery, and Sam is warning, “Dean!” but they swerve off the road anyway, front wheel sliding perfectly over a patch of ice the two of them didn’t notice, not until it was too late.

He’s grabbing the handle above the window, Dean is swearing, loudly, and there’s a crunch, like paper crumpling, but louder. He smells the snow, cold and tangy, he smells paint and Dean—the Impala slurs to a stop.

Sam opens his eyes. Dean’s thrown himself half on top of Sam in his half a second of reaction time—there’s a scratch from a wayward branch across his cheek. Dean scuttles away, almost embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he says.

They’re fine. The car isn’t on the road, and they’ve trampled a couple of gorse bushes, run down a small tree, but it’s fine. The Impala isn’t even dented. Sam laughs. And laughs. Dean looks at him like he’s died. “Dude,” he says, taps a knuckle against Sam’s temple. “Something finally break in here?”

Sam masters himself. “Jody’s parents have a place somewhere in Oregon.” he tells Dean, “We can go there, but it’ll be cold and miserable, and there’ll almost definitely be a case. Not to mention the cold.”

Dean scowls at him. “Or?” he asks, sensing the rest.

“I have a few friends in Palo Alto.” Sam tests the words, makes sure to let them pass casual and detached. Dean still stiffens.

“They’ll let you stay?” Dean returns, just as careful.

“Us,” Sam corrects. “Just for a few days, we can hustle some pool, get our shit together, everyone always bets too much in the casinos anyway. It won’t be this cold, I mean, of course it won’t—” Sam’s rambling, he’s aware, but he isn’t quite sure how to stop.

“Dean?” he asks. Are we past this? Have you forgiven me, for Stanford, for all of it?

Dean is perfectly still. Sam is about to backtrack— but Dean smiles, it reaches his eyes.

“Tell me you know where all the bars are,” he says.

\--

The bunker is cold. Miracle is waiting, she sniffs him all over, licks his face. Sam doesn’t have the strength to do anything but let her. She buries herself in his side, noses at a dark patch on his shirt and whines, a low, keening sound.

Sam doesn’t have to tell her Dean’s dead. She already knows.

\--

In Palo Alto, they go to see Jess’s grave. It isn’t even planned, really, not even a little. The Impala is cruising along, her floormats and dashboard pockets stuffed with crumpled bills, flank freshly washed, enough junk food in the trunk to last them a century. Knowing Dean, it’ll be gone within the week.

Alta Mesa Memorial Park is the only cemetery in Palo Alto. It’s a wide, sprawling thing, grass greener than it had any right to be, the gray solemn and respectful. It’s been years since he’s been, and the inscription—Jessica Moore, Beloved Daughter—is enough to send a spiky, guilty thing shooting straight into his heart.

Dean knows without Sam having to say to stay in the car.

Sam runs a finger across the letters. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I should have saved you.”

Sam doesn’t even know what’s brought this on, this sudden wave of pain and dizziness and regret he thought he’d long since left behind. But he couldn’t leave this one behind, could he, because this is where the long record of Sam Winchester’s mistakes begins. The first one. Ground zero.

Everything he’s ever done after, the killing, the pining, the heartbreak, it all starts here.

His fault—all of it. When he’s with Dean, when he’s travelling, Jess becomes intangible, a memory he can let slip through his fingers, push it away and forget it exists. But there’s a body, somewhere beneath Sam’s feet, a body Sam worshipped and loved like he’d never loved anything before, not even like he loved Dean.

Dean was obligated to love him, need him, but Jess hadn’t owed him anything. Look where it got her.

(Sam can hear her voice too, sometimes. Just snippets of her laughing voice, _geekboy_ and _samsquatch_ and a fond _freak_ )

Sam’s actually listening to her speak in his head, and the hand on his shoulder is so sudden and disturbingly present that he’s twisted and tackled and managed to make Dean crack his head against the stone a little. Dean sits up, rubbing his hair with one hand, making a surrendering gesture with the other. “Easy there, tiger.” he says. “Just me,”

 _Just me_. Sam closes his eyes to that.

Dean’s voice is pained. “Aw Sammy, don’t do that.” he says.

“Did you know,” Sam’s voice is so flat, so gone, he doesn’t even recognize it. “That Jess was the only thing that kept me from running back,” to you, Sam doesn’t add aloud. “I was acing classes, sure, Dean, but it,” Sam swallows. “It took a lot. Out of me. I know I said full ride, but that’s excluding the housing and the textbooks and I was only just making it, you know? Three jobs Dean, and studying all hours of the night and that’s not even mentioning college. It was normal, it was brilliant, I missed you. And I would have come back, maybe with a degree, but I would have, I swear. It was only a matter of time before I showed up at whatever motel you were staying in and begged you to take me back.”

Dean’s gaping at Sam like he’s never seen him before. Sam barrels on. “Then I found Jess. Or rather, she found me. You’d have liked her Dean. Can you believe that’s the first thought I had? My brother would have liked her?” He laughs, it’s pathetic, broken to his own ears. “She made it worth it. Everything.”

And then: “I was going to ask her to marry me.” Sam admits. Dean makes a sound like he’s been punched in the gut. Then, “Jesus, Sam.”

“Not right away, of course. In three years, five years. But I could see it happening.”

“Stop,” Dean’s voice is tight, he’s scooted away.

“Oh why?” Sam inquires acidly. “I should open up more right?”

“Not like this,” Dean snaps back, scrambling backward. “You think I want to know; you think I want to be reminded what I took from you?”

Sam blinks. “This isn’t your fault.” he assures. “It’s—” He’s interrupted by a fist to his face. Dean leaps back, hissing, examining his knuckles. “Motherfucking—” he trails off for a good thirty seconds, repeats every curse he knows, from Dad, from Bobby, and adds a couple in Latin too, for good measure. Then scowls at Sam from beneath his lashes, looking very much like the pissed off brother when Sam stole his favorite gun or played his own music for once.

“Christ Sammy, what? Is sharpening teeth gonna be your new thing?”

“You’re the one who decided to punch me when I was talking.” Sam counters mildly.

He licks blood from his teeth, isn’t sure if it’s Dean’s or his own.

“Are you gonna tell me why?”

Dean lets his hand drop with a last swear. “You were going to say it’s your own damn fault, and I figured punching you was the fastest way to stop you.”

“Not the fastest,” Sam says, and Dean’s face is slamming to the side, cause Sam’s punched him, hard, enough that he sees Dean pull his lip into his mouth and tongue at the cut.  
His eyes are glittering, green and bright in the shadows. “That’s how it’s gonna be, huh?” Dean says. Sam shrugs, but he easily ducks the fist directed at his jaw.

They’re so familiar with each other’s moves that it’s actually going to take effort on Sam’s part, or something dirty, to pin his brother down. But he’s content to play a little, swiping Dean’s fists aside, aiming kicks at his legs that don’t connect, circling, circling, circling.

Until he’s falling, flat on his back. Dean smirks at him. “Don’t give me the pouty face, Sammy. You—”  
Sam’s flipped them, and he has the advantage, Dean can’t possibly wriggle his way out of this one. But Dean brings his knee to connect with the arch of Sam’s back, it’s surprising enough to makes his grip give, a little—and Dean’s got him upside the face, Sam can feel the exact indentations of his brother’s knuckles in his cheekbones, remembers them, this isn’t their first time up and against each other, is unlikely to be their last.

He backs away, panting. The air’s changed, charged with electricity.

He goes for the soft spot below Dean’s sternum, finds a forearm blocking it, so he goes below the belt—still doesn’t connect, and fuck, he’s left his right side open, and Dean’s elbow burns against his side, but Sam’s swiped at his head in the confusion while they untangle their bodies for another round. He hasn’t bothered to temper his blows, so it makes Dean stumble back and curse a little.

This is when one of them pulls away, same side, Sammy, remember?

Dean just keeps coming at him.

They fight like this, sometimes, to rid themselves of the startling intensity between them—the burden of being each other’s light, darkness, and everything in between. The fear and the love and the you’re all I got.

Sam thinks they’ll destroy each other every time.

He’s always wrong.

\--

The map room in the bunker is exactly like they left it—which means there’s a mug of coffee half-drunk, papers strewn everywhere, The Ancient Magicks and Judaean Lore is open, spine cracked and various parts of the text highlighted in neon yellow, a habit Dean’s picked up purely to horrify Sam.

Cas’s room they haven’t cleaned out, as far as Sam knows, neither of them have entered it since…well. But it isn’t immaculately neat like how it usually is, and another pang hits him low in his chest. So this is where Dean spends his nights now.

Sam stops only to grab the remaining trenchcoat, and he stumbles to Dean’s room.

It smells like something has died in it (horrible comparison, Sam knows) and of beer and peanut m and m’s and Sam steps on a candy cane as he reaches out to open the bedside drawer. The amulet. Dean wears it most days, but never on a hunt.

Sam picks it up.

\--

Nightmares make up a significant portion of their lives.

When he was little, it was about Dean or Dad not returning from their overnight trips, leaving Sam to fend for himself in a world where everything’s designed to kill him. There’s one Sam can remember from back then, that haunts him even now. A black forest. A black forest. A black forest.

That’s it. Nothing changes. The shadows don’t move. No breeze. No light. He can’t move. He can’t breathe. He can’t wake up then, but when he finally does, it’s always screaming.

Later, most of his dreams are just Lucifer carving designs into his back, battery acid, a particularly gruesome one involving kite string and corkscrews. The worst ones are when it isn’t him on the table.

Sam’s never quite sure what Dean dreams about—mostly because Dean’s nightmares are some quiet, torturous thing, don’t give him an out like Sam’s do. He can never read it on Dean’s face, but he can see it in the bruises under his eyes, the tight set of his jaw.

They deal with the dreams separately, it’s an unspoken agreement, but there have been breaks in that cooperation, when there had to be.

Sam can’t sleep for a week after he gets back from the Cage, and he’s not even exaggerating. The first two nights, Dean doesn’t notice, but Sam actually drops his plate the next time Dean hands him waffles and lets it break over his foot before he knows what’s happened. He only refocuses when he feels Dean snap in front of his face.

“Sam.” Sam blinks. Dean snaps again, and Sam jumps, regains enough control to snarl back, “What?”

“D’you get any sleep last night?”

“A couple hours,” Sam lies, but his traitor body catches him in a yawn and Dean sighs.

“Go the hell back to sleep, man.” is his sagely advice. Sam grits his teeth. “Would if I could,” he says irritatedly before he reminds himself to keep his mouth shut.

“Ah,” is Dean’s intelligible response.

In Louisiana, a wendigo almost makes Sam into its dinner before Dean intervenes. Dean’s in a scary mood, quiet and purposeful and weary as he patches Sam’s stomach back together, steals a pack of sleeping pills from Lafayette Medical Centre and returns to the motel where he’s dumped Sam with a six-pack of their preferred brand of beer. He switches on the tiny TV where there’s a marathon of Scooby-doo running as if Dean’s planned it that way.

He hands Sam a bottle. “Get drunk, little brother.” he says.

Three hours later and Sam passes out on the sofa where he and Dean have piled all the pillows and blankets. All it does is keep him unconscious and unable to escape when the dreams start. (Not dreams. Memories.) He’s floating on something, at the periphery of sleep, watching them do things to his body, watching them do things to his brother, Cas, Charlie, Kevin, Dad. The pills mean he can’t wake up, no matter how much he strains to, they mean that he has to watch.

Sam wakes up hands tied together, Dean’s tired face above his own.

His cheeks are wet, Sam can’t even wipe the tears off. “You can untie me now,” he tells Dean, voice wrecked, even worse than before.

Dean is drawn, wary. He steps into a patch of light, there’s a bruise blossoming along the crisp edge of his jaw. “Sure you won’t go all Godzilla on me again, Sammy?”

Sam’s too tired to feel sorry. “That was a terrible idea.” he says, holding out his hands. Dean begins to work on the knots. “Noted.” Sam rubs his wrists.

“Sam.” Dean says eventually. Sam says nothing. “You’re killing yourself.”

“Yeah?” his voice is bitter. “Good. Maybe if I do it first, no one else will have the chance to.”

“Sam!” Dean says, shocked. Sam looks up at his brother. “What?” he snaps. There’s no response.

“Sorry I woke you up, your highness.” Sam says. “Go the hell back to sleep.” Dean gives him an inscrutable look, after a second, sits tentatively down on the floor in front of him. “Talk to me.” he says.

Sam looks away. “Not in the mood.” Dean puts a hand on his knee, tilts his head to the side like he's considering something. 

A beat.

“This is real,” he says. Sam’s heart thuds wildly in his chest.

“How do you know?” he whispers.

His brother looks stricken, but it hardens into resolve.

Dean takes his favorite pocketknife from his pocket, flicks it open. The blade gleams sharply, dully, in turn. “Hand.” Dean demands. Sam digs his left hand out from the nest of warmth. The cut Dean makes across his palm is deep, achy and swift and reassuring. “Real.” Dean affirms.

Sam stares as a drop of blood trails down his wrist, down to his elbow. It’s strangely fascinating. Of all the scenarios Lucifer has shown him, this one has never played out quite this way. “Okay,” Sam agrees.

Dean visibly slumps in relief. “Come on,” he says. “I have another idea.”

The other idea turns out to be driving around tiny Lafayette twenty times in the Impala while the moon glimmers softly overhead, the softest volumes in Dean’s tape collection playing, windows up and engine purring. It’s an accidentally genius turn of events, because the Impala equals safe in Sam’s messed up brain, and though he can’t quite sleep, he feels calmer and less on edge. Dean has to be as tired as he is, but the front wheels don’t waver too obviously on the road and Sam’s too comfortable, curled up entirely on one side in the passenger seat, to actually protest.

The night flickers by in intervals of purple and yellow streetlights. The wind smells of rain.

The last thing he remembers is Dean humming ‘Hey Jude’ under his breath.

The sun makes Sam open his eyes. They’re parked in front of the motel. Dean’s leather jacket is flung over Sam’s legs. Dean himself is draped over the steering wheel, snoring softly. Sam reaches over, blares the horn as loud as it will go. Dean startles awake loudly, messily, reaching for his gun before he notices where he is, notices Sam.

Realization dawns. Dean kicks him. “Bitch.” he says, somehow looking pissed off and pleased at the same time.

Sam can’t stop himself from smiling when he delivers the obligated reply.

“Jerk.”

\--

Sam tears off pieces of the trenchcoat, long brown-beige strips. It feels right to use it to wrap Dean up. The material’s a little thicker than the white sheets they usually use, but who gives a damn? It’ll all be ashes soon enough. Miracle hasn’t neared the body, smart of her, but she gives Sam’s hand a lick when he moves to get the amulet.

Should Sam keep it? He wants to—he wants to wear it round his neck for the rest of his miserable life, but it was Sam’s first gift to Dean, a mark of Sam’s protection. He thinks Dean might need it where ever he’s going, so he ties it around his brother’s neck, settles it in the hollow of his throat where it rests, hollow and ashen, where Sam’s used to seeing it since he was four years old.

He brings a fist down on Dean’s chest. “Wake up,” Sam says. “You said you wouldn’t leave me, you sonovabitch,” he slurs the words exactly how Dean does, “so wake up.” He pounds Dean again, right on top of the amulet, the side of his fist protesting.

Miracle barks in alarm. She’s right, he shouldn’t be punching Dean when he can’t hit back. But he hits Dean one last time, petulant little brother, a perverse kind of CPR. He thinks the amulet has melded a little with Dean’s skin when he stops, sucking huge, heavy breaths to do something, to stop. His fist is bleeding, dripping onto Dean’s chest where Sam’s just cleaned him up.

Sam grabs the last strip of cloth, makes quick work of covering Dean’s face. He hauls his brother, nothing more than a scarecrow, a puppet, a dead thing, onto the pyre, positions him in the center. Fires up the lighter, tosses it into the kerosene-soaked wood.

Sam manages to stand still, for the first few minutes. Miracle stands vigil beside him.  
He finds that he needs to break something. The first thing Sam gets his hands on is the axe, and the first thing he sees is the Impala.

The glass goes first. Driver’s seat window. _Driver picks the music._ Passenger’s seat window. _Shotgun shuts his cakehole._ He hacks at the frame, the roof, the wipers, the black paint. He’s killing something that Dean loves. “Come stop me, you bastard!” Sam roars, but Dean does not come. The fire behind him burns higher.

He swings at the vents, where the rattle of Legos irks him until he manages to break them too. Sam stops only when he sees their initials carved behind the back window and the trunk and the anger abruptly becomes heavy. He cries, ugly sobbing, childlike anger and misery and love spilling out of him and there’s no place for it to go. There’s no brother to absorb it. There’s nothing.

He’s standing in the middle of nowhere, watching his brother’s body burn with the remains of his best friend, and thinks resentfully why they didn’t bother to take him too. The ground is glass and grass both. The Impala is a skeleton of metal and wires and torn leather.

Sam is alone.

\--

Pastor Jim made the two of them pray every night when Sam was about five, when Dad used to leave them in the farmhouse for weeks at a time while he worked a case. Before dinner, before going to bed. The same verse.

_For food in a world where many walk in hunger;_   
_For faith in a world where many walk in fear;_   
_For friends in a world where many walk alone;_   
_We give you thanks, O Lord._

_Amen_ , Sam says.

Sam can remember the exact night Dean stopped praying.

Sam can remember the exact night _he_ stopped praying.

“Dad’s coming back, right Dean?”

“Course he is.”

“And you?”

“Hmm?”

“Pastor Jim says you’re almost old enough to go with Dad. I’ll have to wait for both of you then.”

“Well, you won’t have to wait long, Sammy.”

“So both of you will always come back? Dad _and_ you?”

Dean thinks about this for a long time. Sam remembers that pause, that _lie_. “Yep.” and then, “Go to bed, kiddo.”

\--

Sam’s splintered into a thousand pieces. Eileen can’t put him back together. Or Bobby. He’s stopped answering Jody’s or Donna’s calls. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men and the rest. He doesn’t particularly care.

He starts living for the hunt, instead of hunting for a living. It’s insane, he’s riding a strange kind of high in the wake of Dean’s death. Sam’s aim has never been truer, his strikes never stronger. He flips quarters into the air and shoots straight circles into them, he takes on an entire nest of vamps on his own and emerges without a scratch. He drinks and fucks and drinks some more. He becomes Dean, just minus the car.

Baby’s remains are in the salvage yard by Bobby’s old place. Sam had her towed there and hasn’t returned since. He doesn’t plan to.

His days are a jumble of waking up in different states every morning, religiously ignoring well-meaning phone calls, different variations of vodka and whiskey, hunting things, saving people. But it’s not the family business anymore. Hard to do that without a family, Sam thinks, feels worse for letting himself think it.

Sam is working a case in Texas, and this time, it looks like he’s bitten off more than he can chew. More than ten hunters could chew, actually. A herd of chupacabras, and to top it all off there are three pups, and three enraged females to go with them. Sam contemplates letting them take him, but there’s a family in his charge, parents and a little kid living in a solitary ranch several miles from Amarillo. The most he’s even taken on is three, three measly adolescent chupacabras, and Dean, four.

There are easily double that number now, and they aren’t grunting teenagers either.

Sam’s bleeding from his head, his wrist. He knows he has at least one busted rib, it feels like his hip has been pulled clean from its socket. His breath comes in harsh pants.

In his head, Dean tells him to stand the fuck up. Sam asks him what the point is. Dean says that there isn’t one. He tells him to get up because his big brother is asking him to.

In the same heartbeat, the female’s grunting nears, but something distracts it, distracts it from ripping Sam’s head off. A stone. A little boy’s hand.

Sam fights, harder than he’s ever fought in his entire godsdamned life, screaming and clawing and biting—ugly and visceral. The Impala’s keys, well, they end up eyeball deep in a particularly dedicated alpha. Sam thinks of Baby, promises he’ll fix her, for Dean, for himself, if only he gets out of this one.

He loses the parents, but he saves the boy.

 _Still a win, Sammy_ , Dean tells him.

When Sam’s done, he limps to where the boy is kneeling, holding his mother’s cooling hand. “What’s your name, kiddo?” Sam asks him, collapsing, there’s so much blood he thinks he’ll die and this will all be for nothing. Sucks in a breath. Two. Applies pressure.

The boy is easily young enough not to know what to say.

But his voice is clean and soft and sharp. “Dean.” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> exeunt omnes  
> thank you and good night.


End file.
